Insights from the Backbase and Synpulse partnership.
This is the fifth article in a series of five, where we look at the third of the three valuable lessons learned from our real-life experience with helping a client set up an engagement banking platform.
As our final takeaway, it's crucial to remember that it's never too early to build up the skills of your employees.
One of the challenges a bank faces is attracting or retaining talent – especially talent with specific technical skill sets required to build and maintain a new digital platform. As banks are competing with technology firms and fintechs, being and remaining an attractive employer is key.
The first step is to empower employees to gain new technology skills and source specific expertise for your digital transformation. The skills needed on the technical side are focused on open and mobile technologies, and specifically include:
In addition, you will need:
Resourcing for a digital transformation programme needs to be planned well ahead. Commitment to a substantial and early investment in skill build-up is an integral part of the programme itself. For Backbase engagement banking programmes, we recommend upskilling a part of the existing digital banking team at the beginning of the programme and integrating these new teams with the existing expert teams at Backbase and external suppliers like Synpulse. The earlier you invest in these skills, the higher the return on your investment will be and the quicker you will be able to launch your new platform.
Banks, which have launched on the Backbase engagement banking platform, have improved their KPIs significantly, with 90% lower channel maintenance costs, 33% lower IT costs for new app builds, and 60% faster time to market.
The digital bank is the bank of the future. When planning or running such a programme, our recommendation is to focus on a plan beyond delivery, establish clear ways of working between all the teams involved, and attract and build up specific platform skills early.
If you’re interested in finding out more and learning how this approach can benefit the digital transformation of your bank, feel free to contact us.